Exploring new tools to add to my toolbox

HTML with Bootstrap Control Interface for ROSBot

While learning ROS, I was confident that it would be possible to replicate the kind of functionality I had built for SGVHAK rover. That is to say: putting up a HTML-based user interface for the user and talking to robot mechanical based on user input. Except that, in theory, the modular nature of ROS and its software support should mean it’ll take less time to build one. Or at least, it should be for someone who had already invested in the learning curve of ROS infrastructure.

At the time I didn’t know how long it would take to ramp up on ROS. I’m also a believer that it is educational to do something the hard way once to learn the ropes. So SGVHAK Rover received a pretty simple robot control built from minimal use of frameworks. Now that I’m ramping up on ROS, I’m debating whether it’s worthwhile to duplicate the functionality for self-education’s sake or if I want to go straight to something more functional than a remote control car.

This week I have confirmation a ROS web interface pretty simple to do: this recent post on Medium described one way of creating a web-based interface for a ROS robot. The web UI framework used in this tutorial is Bootstrap, and the sample robot is ROSBot. The choice of robot is no surprise since the Medium post was written by CEO of Husarion, maker of the robot. At MSRP of $1,299 it is quite a bit out of my budget for my own ROS experimentation at least for now. Still, the information on Medium may be useful if I tackle this project myself for a different robot, possibly SGVHAK rover or Sawppy.